GENDER EQUITY SLOW IN COMING FOR KUWAITIS

Three days after Iraq invaded Kuwait on Aug. 2, 1990, several hundred women braved the guns of enemy soldiers to stage the first public demonstration against the occupation.

Women also took the lead in organizing collections of food and medicine for those in need during the five-month occupation.

Those activities earned the gratitude of Kuwait's ruler, Sheik Jaber Sabagh, who had fled into exile, and he promised rights to women.

Four years later, those rights have yet to be granted fully.

Chief among these was the right to vote and to hold office. Bills have been introduced in the National Assembly, the Kuwaiti parliament, to extend these rights to women, but the chances of approval seem slight.

"The Sunni Islamists are against the bills, and the Shiites are for them," said Abdul-Reda Assiri, a political scientist at Kuwait University. "The secular forces are for the bills, but the traditional nomads are against. I doubt the bills will pass. The religious element is dominant."

Seventy percent of Kuwaitis belong to the Sunni branch of Islam, and only 30 percent are Shiites.

Assiri said the government, which controls 15 votes in the 50-member parliament, might swing enough votes to win passage of one of the bills if it lobbied for them. But that hasn't happened.

The government has, however, appointed women to three high-ranking posts that were previously reserved for men. Kuwait has its first woman ambassador, Nabila Mulla, serving in Zimbabwe; the first woman rector of a university anywhere in the Arab world, Faiza Khorafi, and, in Rasha Sabah, the first woman undersecretary of a government ministry.

Sabah, who serves in the Ministry of Higher Education, holds a doctorate in Italian studies from Yale University, and is Kuwait's best-known advocate of women's rights.

"We are truly grateful for the confidence in us that is shown by these appointments," she said. "But our main demand remains to be achieved."

She said the government bloc in parliament was willing to support voting rights for women, but not the right to run for public office. Some Kuwaiti women, she acknowledged, find that gradual approach acceptable. But she is not among them.

"Such rights are not divisible," she said. "It's just a matter of time until we win our rights. I don't know if it will happen in 1996, when the next elections are due, but I am convinced you can't swim against the currents of time."

Sabah acknowledged, however, that most Kuwaiti women probably do not want additional rights.

"There are many women saying it is not our job to vote or hold office," she said. "There are some who think women's rights in the workplace should be limited to teaching or working in nurseries."

Compared to some of the other Arab states of the Persian Gulf region, Kuwait is liberal on the issue of women's rights. In general, women in the region have to keep their heads, legs and arms covered, and if they work they often have to do so in a segregated environment. In Saudi Arabia, women are not even allowed to drive cars.

Many Kuwaiti women have adopted a Western style of dress, and they work in the same offices as men. They comprise 13 percent of the native work force, and several have risen to the assistant secretary of state level in government ministries, the oil and finance ministries being conspicuous examples. Two-thirds of the 14,000 students at Kuwait University are women.

In most government departments and the private sector, Sabah said, it is qualification and not sex that counts.

"A woman who is qualified gets equal pay, and for promotions it is the same. I don't hear of any discrimination," she said.

There is no serious attempt to repeal any of these gains.

"We would never have a law to order women to cover their heads and wear long sleeves," said Ahmad Baqer, an Islamist member of parliament. "We must encourage them to do these things through television and the schools, not impose things on people. If we did, they would not elect us next time."

Baqer, like all of the dozen or so Islamists in parliament, is firmly opposed to giving women the vote.

"Giving this right to women would change nothing and might cause trouble to families," he said. "In a conservative society such as ours, it is unimaginable that a woman would have a different vote from her husband and her father. So it is not necessary to have women voting. A man voting is like a family vote."

Baqer has no objections to women working-he is a pharmacist, and so is his wife-so long as men and women confine their conversation to business and do not socialize in the workplace. But he does object to the extra time that women would be away from home if they served in parliament.

"In our society, we have five, six, seven children per family," he said. "The woman needs to be at home as much as possible to look after her children. We already have remote-control mothers, women who work and call home every 30 minutes to check with the nanny on their children."

Baqer also pointed out that Kuwaiti men traditionally meet in the evenings in a diwaniya, a room usually annexed to their houses, to discuss politics and social issues. If women served in public office, he said, they might start demanding their own diwaniyas or even mixed diwaniyas. He prefers the degree of segregation of the sexes that now exists.

Kuwaiti women who advocate broader rights usually refrain from pointing this out, but their country's archenemy, Iraq, allows women to vote and hold public office.

"We are far better off than Iraqi women," said Sabah. "Who wants such rights if you are made a puppet of a criminal regime? If I can only get my rights on the condition that I be a fellow thug, no thanks."

Until such time as women get the vote, Sabah would like to see more women going to work.

"You can't talk of total development without the full participation of women, who are half the population," she said. "Kuwaiti women are fairly well educated, but we need more of a drive to encourage them to join the work force."